This was originally a reply to another thread, but I feel like I got off topic but wanted to share what I wrote.
So here’s what I think about human interaction, love, and sex.
I workout with old friends and I have a buddy I watch anime with once a week during the weekdays. I spend most friday and saturday nights out with people, at a party, going out to eat, just getting together with old friends at my place, something. Most sundays I see family members. I talk to people through texts, phone calls or facetime every day.
I cant go long without human interaction or I get unwell feeling. When I was psychotic I avoided interaction unless it involved me getting drunk. The past can kiss my ass, Im a different person today. As long as I take my medications I am alright. That and as long as I sleep enough and keep everything in moderation. Working out too much made me a little moody- I was very lazy when not in the gym and then burned off tons of energy in the gym when I was on a powerlifting team. The end result was a sleepy, overly taxed mouse who got off his butt to lift ridiculously heavy weights three nights a week, then sat right back down.
Interaction with others gives me energy- I am extroverted today, like I was before the illness struck me. I’ve made an amazing recovery, it’s great that I found the right meds which actually work and only sedate me to where I need to drink energy drinks or very strong coffee 2-3 times a day. My libido is intact and working well, i havent gotten out of shape, I come across as normal to most people, I have some funky days where I feel a little off but its nothing like how I was when I was in my late teens. I was a ■■■■ mess and I thought I was beyond repair back then.
I am an ENTJ today, I was before schizophrenia when I was 17. I was an INTJ from 18 1/2- 20 1/2, I recovered socially with the support of old friends and a therapist, I also began dating again when I was 20. Im 21 now. Now people actually like my company and my signature brand of humor is back, all of my friends who saw me in the depths of schizophrenia have remarked that I am back to normal and tell me to stay this way.
I have a bit of a romantic attachment to most of my old friends, I am biromantic and selectively bisexual. I am very picky about who I get physically intimate with, I have turned down lots of people’s sexual propositions, but I have emotional feelings for friends of both genders. It’s hard to describe. It basically means that I get crushes on people without sexual attraction, but also have both crushes and sexual attraction towards certain people, people I date. I would say I have strong feelings for most of my close straight friends, but not in a sexual way, just in a “brotherly love” sort of way?
I mean I would say that I love my friends to a degree but am not sexually attracted to all of them. For example, a long deep serious conversation about life, our futures, ect, with an old friend gets means a lot to me, but I dont want to be physically intimate with them. Like when I was 16 I remember having a heart to heart with a male straight friend and we both came to tears, we were never in any way sexually involved but were very close and spent tons of time together. I still feel more platonic love for that friend, who I keep in touch with, than I felt for a female friend with benefits I had when I was 20, who I had tons of sex with.
But then I do feel sexually attracted to some of my friends. They figure, they know I am bisexual, but they know that I am not promiscuous and arent uncomfortable around me. I get more satisfaction out of conversations and opening up to people than I get from sex. For me, sex is just physical, it’s basically a sport. It can be fun, it can make bonds stronger, but it’s basically like doing recreational drugs with someone, flooding one anothers brain with dopamine and oxytocin. I equate having sex with someone to getting high with someone. Not saying it’s bad, but thats the reality of it.
I have a friend who is asexual, omniromantic and non-binary but female and she dresses and grooms like her gender given at birth. She says she feels romatically drawn to everyone to at least some degree, others more so, but never sexually drawn to anyone. I guess what I am trying to say is that I love my close friends and need interaction with them to feel good, but dont want to have sex with them? Again, sex is like a sport/recreational drug to me at this time in my life. It’s not bad but it is not the best thing ever. I do have sexual needs, I dont deny that, I do have sex with people sometimes and I masturbate. I had so much sex in such a short amount of time when I was 20 that it got old and I got tired of it. I was a pornaholic when I was psychotic. I’ve done pretty much any sexual act you can think of with both genders.
Sex is overrated, love is dying out. You can have sex without any sort of love and you can have love without any sort of sex. You can tell if you love someone by imagining if they were to die and how you would react to it. People often think love is a word for only married or engaged people or family- I disagree, that’s cold and distant. I think not loving anyone except the person you marry or the people in your family is sad. Everyone should have a little love for everyone else to begin with.
But yeah I sort of just wrote an essay, excuse me. I just felt like sharing my thoughts on social interactions.